Oysters for the Earth Goddess

By ZACH ZORICH

May/June 2015

Beneath a stone carving of the Aztec earth goddess Tlaltecuhtli inside Mexico City’s Templo Mayor, archaeologists have found an offering containing a variety of artifacts and animal bones, including seashells, from all over the Aztec Empire. A new analysis shows that several of the shells come from mollusks that live on Mexico’s Pacific coast, a possible indicator that the Aztecs expanded their empire to that area during the reign of Ahuitzotl, between 1486 and 1502.

IN THIS ISSUE

Features

The Cult of Amun

The Minoans of Crete

Letter From Hawaii

From the Trenches

The Charred Scrolls of Herculaneum

Off The Grid

Viking Trading or Raiding?

Telecom History Deep Beneath the Pacific

How Grass Became Maize

Medicine on the High Seas

Cause of Death

A Western Wiki-pedia

Catching Fire and Keeping It

Oysters for the Earth Goddess

Ant Explorers

A Soul of a City

A Slice of Parasitic Life

The Price of a Warship

Medieval Leather, Vellum, and Fur

A Shipwreck in Drydock

Mongol Fashion Statement

World Roundup

Badgers for dinner in Neolithic Spain, the search for Doctor Syntax, a rare coffin emerges in Egypt, Ukraine’s prehistoric McMansions, and fishing for Homo erectus

Artifact

A pagan palindrome in a Christian capital shows how old beliefs die hard

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